Riina

Riina
by Howard Lyon
Abilities	Elantrian, Awakener, Worldhopper
Titles	The Sorceress
Groups	Ire
Homeworld	Sel
Universe	Cosmere

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“There is precisely one being I fear on this planet. ”

—Xisis in reference to Riina

Riina, also known as the Sorceress, is a member of the Ire and was a resident on Lumar considered one of the most dangerous people on the planet.

Appearance and Personality

“In her case, in lieu of a soul, the woman had pure ice. Kept cold and frozen by her heart.”

—Hoid describing Riina.

In the Cognitive Realm of Scadrial, Riina was a withered husk.

On Lumar, Riina appears to be a woman in her fifties (when she gained the ability to stop aging) who is short and plump. Like most Elantrians, she dislikes makeup as she thinks it takes away from the effect of her glowing skin.

“You’re going to have quite the curse, I’ll tell you. I’ve been saving this one for a special occasion.”

—Riina gloating to Tress.

Riina is known to be unusually cruel, she curses anyone who enters her domain and survives, as well as anyone who attempts to talk to her. She personally delights in coming up with cruel curses, spending her spare time coming up with new ideas for them. As part of this she also ensures that the cursed individual is aware of the full details of the curse, but also are incapable of talking about it with others and thus unable to ask for help, this is done intentionally on her part in order to make the curse crueller for the afflicted. All those who have met her attest to her being a cruel and heartless individual, even Xisis considers imprisonment under him to be a mercy when the alternative is meeting Riina.

She also seems to enjoy the reputation of the Sorceress, despite it being unneeded she is known to speak in rhyme whilst placing a curse on someone. Though at the same time she shows a certain level of disdain for those on Lumar, thinking anyone unable to get past her trials as being not worth her time, considers folklore about her to be funny nonsense and dismisses their technological achievements.

Riina herself, like most Elantrians, is known to be very cautious and not being willing to take any risks that may involve her dying. This was a motive for her arriving to Lumar, a system where she did not think she could be opposed and whose technology was vastly inferior to her own, when faced with a force that actually has a chance of stopping her she retreats. Even the knowledge that a dragon is on the same planet as her is enough to spook her. Riina is paranoid to the extent that she keeps vats of acid near by on the of chance that a Kandra will try to act against her in some way. Despite this caution however Hoid considered Riina easy to manipulate.

She believes that spaceships should have sliding doors.

Attributes and Abilities

by Howard Lyon

Midnight Essence under Riina's control

Riina is an Elantrian and Awakener. Riina is also capable of using AonDor in order to grant curses to others. How exactly these curses are formed is unknown however the person given the curse is aware as to what the stipulations of the curse are. When placed upon someone a requirement is made to break the curse, other than meeting this requirement there is no way to break the curse, not even Riina herself can achieve this. The curse itself however can be altered by other elantrians. An aspect of the curse is always consistent which is that the cursed individual can not discuss the curse with others, any attempt to do so leads to them stuttering. The curses are flawed however in that since they can not be changed they can be manipulated if one finds a way to do so that Riina failed to prevent, one way to do so is by identifying what an individual can not talk about. This indirectly reveals aspects of their curse.

She is capable of investing common animals to grant them self-awareness, making them her familiars.

Other beings in the Cosmere also fear Riina, one of which is Xisis who considers imprisoning people to be a mercy when the alternative is for them to face the sorceress. He himself fears to confront her himself.

The Sorceress' Army

In the role of being the Sorceress she had an army of some sort, most probably her metal soldiers and midnight essense. Her army had gone to war against the Emerald Sea multiple times in the past with the Emerald Sea losing the conflict each time. Even during peace time her forces were known to go on raids against the kingdom. This army also apparently contains ships, of which only hers can sail with any others being destroyed by her forces.

In the case of midnight essence they are formed when rain hits the spores in the Midnight Sea. Upon being spawned these beings fell under her command and followed her wishes. In order to achieve this goal she managed to set up a way to continuously grant water to the monsters formed by the midnight essense. She also possesses an army of awakened soldiers, these troops are awakened constructs and immune to almost all weapon fire on Lumar. A single reptilian humanoid also is under her command.

History

She was among the five members of the Ire that set out on an expedition to try and capture Preservation's Shard. She rode on horseback and carried a decoy version of the Ire's orb. She abandoned the expedition with the rest of the group when Kelsier used Alonoe's robes to make it appear that she had disintegrated.

Many years later Riina came into the possession of a spaceship and used it to travel to Lumar, part of her motive to do this was because of her opinion of the planet being unimportant and the fact that no one on the planet could oppose her in any meaningful way. Whilst there she set up her defences and the locals noticed her presence on the planet, over the years she earned the title of Sorceress. Under this name she went to cursed anyone who dared so much as try to speak to her, inspiring fear among the population. As well as this she was also known to sometimes simply kill visitors. The kingdom on the Emerald Sea, and possibly others, attempted numerous wars against her and her army but each ended in failure. This led to further raids done by Riina against the kingdom.

“She took my other sense of taste. The important one. And with it went my sense of humor, my sense of decorum, my sense of purpose, and my sense of self”

—Hoid explaining his curse.

Eventually Hoid noticed Riina's presence on the planet and decided to approach her. For a long time Hoid had desired to become an Elantrian and learned that the only way was to be invited to become one, in order to achieve this he decided that Riina would be the most likely to do so. Therefore Hoid arrived on her island and made a bet with her, he would allow himself to be cursed on the condition that if he broke it he would become an Elantrian. Riina agreed to these terms and cursed him so as to lose most of his mental faculties and set the term of breaking it to be entering her tower. Following this Riina kept an eye on Hoid over the ensuing years but never felt worried that he would actually break the curse.

Following her curse of Hoid the Sorceress continued her raiding of the Emerald Sea, due to these pressures the king eventually began to consider it necessary to try and go attempt another war to stop her. In order to attempt this he began seeking out for more support for a war among the populace. As part of this effort he sent Charlie to Riina with a marriage proposal under the guise of that being a path to peace, in truth however he merely needed a sacrifice to gain further support and also simply wanted to be rid of him. Upon his arrival Riina ordered her troops to take him to his tower, whilst there she sent out a ransom to the king demanding he hand over souls of the Royal family for the freedom of Charlie. Whilst waiting for his response she and Charlie talked for a time and she learned of his love for Tress, upon it becoming clear that the ransom would go unpaid Riina then elected to curse Charlie into a rat and set the terms of breaking it to be for him to grab Tress and bring her down to the Sorceress to be cursed herself. Following this she allowed him to leave and began further raids against the Emerald Sea.

For the next few months Riina would largely ignore the outside world and focus solely on the activities of Hoid and Charlie on the planet, at some stage she managed to hack into Fort's translation device allowing her to see and hear what he did. This served as an easy way for her to keep tabs on the crew of the Crow's Song and Hoid himself. Hoid speculates that it was around this time she grew worried that he might actually make good on his bet and so began work to sabotage him further. Eventually, by happenstance, both Charlie and Tress arrived on the boat and Riina managed to also keep tabs on her as well, she watched as Tress invented her spore gun, became captain of the crew taking over from Crow and as they plotted their way down towards the Midnight Sea. The pair managed to make their way to the Sorceress's tower by being escorted by Riina's midnight essence.

Upon arriving Tress bartering for Charlie and Riina played along attempting to pass one of her spies off as Charlie with the help of a lightweaving. This very nearly worked until Tress realised the truth just before leaving and turned back to confront Riina with it, who then explained the full details of Charlie's curse to Tress. While having this conversation with the pair she failed to notice the crew of the Crow's Song breaching her defences and getting just outside of her tower. This caused Riina to panic and set up her defences on the island itself leading her to not notice Tress and Charlie using her own computer to communicate to Fort and Salay about a plan to get Hoid into the tower itself and break his curse. Watching her defences fail Riina still felt that Hoid would fail since there was no way for him to enter the tower, she was mistaken however as Hoid managed to sneak into the tower whilst she turned to try and curse Tress in retribution for ruining her day. This allowed Hoid to break his curse and block Riina's curse. Following this Riina offered to let the crew leave but Tress refused and instead demanded Riina herself leave the planet for her crimes against locals there, Riina dismissed this threat until Tress ordered Hoid to help and he indicated that he would. Whilst Riina reckoned that her chances of losing was only around one-in-five she decided this was a risk too much and agreed. She had Tress and her crew leave so that they could watch her ship leave the system from the distance.

Trivia

• Although never stated by the text itself the painting by Howard Lyon's depicts Riina as trying to cast the Aon Shao on Tress. This aon is about transformation and also uses illusion magic, indicating that the Sorceress was planning to have Tress's curse revolve around an illusion or transformation.

Notes

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This article was complete and reviewed prior to Tress of the Emerald Sea, but now needs to be updated.